Eggs Over Cheesy

Eggs and buttered toast: a healthy start for your day.

My dad loved soft boiled eggs, so Mom would make them pretty regularly.  All I really know is that this involves boiling the eggs to less than hard boiled and then removing them from the shells to put them in a bowl.

As a little boy seeing Daddy eat these, I wanted to try them myself, so I would ask Mommy for "eggs in a bowl."  She would not have that usual happy twinkle in her eye but would dutifully make them for me.

Who is that masked pan?  It's not the Lone Ranger.

Years later, when she joined Weight Watchers and started poaching eggs, which is basically boiling water in a small pan dropping eggs out of their shell in boiling water, she said, "I can't believe I spent all those years burning my fingers to make soft boiled eggs."

It had never occured to me that it obviously must have burned her fingers to take hot eggs from boiling water and delicately remove the shells.

This is not Phil Spector!

For the next few years, poached became my preferred method of cooking "dunky eggs." My little girl Gina would happily nod when I asked if she wanted "dunky eggs," as did my other children as they grew up.  I think I coined that phrase when I was a kid, referring to over easy eggs that I could dunk toast in the yoke to eat, whether they were over easy or sunny side up.

I became adept at cooking all forms of dunky eggs but often broke yokes, which while still pretty tasty and high in protein did not come with the fun of dunking toast into the gooey center.

A few years ago, I had a breakthrough idea that revolutionized egg making, leading to worldwide acclaim and...well, you know, the rest is history.



The perfect turning point.

To make eggs over cheesy, I spread grated cheese around the bottom of the frying pan, leaving a couple of less cheesy spots where the egg yokes can settle.  Then, I break two eggs and put them into the cheese indentations to cook over medium heat.   Note that it doesn't matter if you have some cheese that gets no egg, as this becomes a crispy treat.  It also doesn't matter if a little egg ends up someplace other than on the cheese bed, as it will still cook.  The main focus is on getting the yokes into the depressions in the cheese. 

By the way, if you have a 7 inch frying pan and want to have a perfectly circular presentation for two eggs, then all you have to do is follow the same basic directions and cover the entire bottom of the pan.  I acually used to cover the bottom of my standard frying pan, but that became too much of a good thing (crispy cheese) to eat.  Or, there is actually plenty of room in a standard frying pan for three eggs, if you're really hungry.

About 30 seconds to cook the other side.

After peppering generously (no salt is necessary because of the cheese), I just wait for the top of the egg to look relatively done.

When they reach that perfect turning point (I included a photo) or close to it, I flip the eggs over, with the big advantage being that the cheese on the bottom of the pan makes the egg yokes unlikely to break in the process.  I cook another thirty seconds or so, and serve with buttered toast.



Dunky Eggs Over Cheesy!

Cleaning up the frying pan is easy, as little residue remains.  Poached eggs and eggs cooked in butter require far more pan-cleaning effort.

And I have never burned my fingers with this technique.